PlayStation’s policy of not releasing its first-party games on PlayStation Plus on the day of the release will continue, according to a company exec

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Via VGC and Gamefile
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In an interview with Game File, PlayStation's vice president of global services Nick Maguire was asked whether the company was considering changing its PlayStation Plus policy to match that of Xbox, where first-party releases are added to the top tier of its Game Pass service on day one.

Maguire replied that it wasn't, insisting that the company's policy of adding its first-party games at least a year after launch, and instead selecting four or five indie games per year to add to PS Plus, was working for Sony.​
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"We've sort of stayed true to our strategy across the board, where we're not looking to put games in day and date," he explained.

"Our strategy of finding four or five independent day-and-date titles – and using that to complement our strategy of bringing games in when they're 12, 18 months old or older – that balance for us is working really well across the platform."​
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When the PS4 launched, Housemarque's Resogun was made available on launch day for PlayStation Plus subscribers. It later did the same for PS5 title Destruction All-Stars in February 2021, but since then the company has remained resolute in its policy of not adding new first-party games to the service on day one.

Third-party games that have been released on PS Plus on the day of release in recent years have included FBC: Firebreak, The Plucky Squire, Dave the Diver, Animal Well, Tales of Kenzera: Zau and Stray.​
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Maguire was also asked about the PlayStation Classics catalogue, which is available to PlayStation Plus subscribers on the Premium tier. In terms of retro games being added to the service, he said Sony is "trying to bringing in one a month minimum".

Asked why some first-party Sony retro games, such as two Resistance games and Infamous Second Son, had been removed from the catalogue in recent months, Maguire replied that Sony wanted to balance the catalogue.

"We've got 80 collections of games across the catalogue," he replied. "So we want to keep it fresh and bring in new games. Sometimes that means taking a few games out at the same time to keep the proposition interesting and help people find new games as well."​
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I can't even imagine how many times they've been asked to clarify that they're going to keep doing what they've always done. It should be clear by now that Sony doesn't follow every decision MS makes, especially ones that will clearly result in financial losses.
 
Well yeah, it only makes sense to keep doing so.
Look at what happens with titles like Doom Dark Ages. Released on GP, week after "Lol it only sold 7 copies".
Sony dont need that kind of negativity surrounding their titles. They already have enough from Intergalactic to deal with.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
Yet the one losing is the one releasing the games on a subscription service. Why devalue your products like that? There's literally no reason.

Xbox managed to educate their users to not buy their games to a point they needed their games in every platform to make money lol.
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Now imagine what msft can do with the 1 billion pc gamers out there if they could only merge Xbox and windows.

Remember the most wanted steam games are not always aaa titles.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
Yet the one losing is the one releasing the games on a subscription service. Why devalue your products like that? There's literally no reason.

Xbox managed to educate their users to not buy their games to a point they needed their games in every platform to make money lol.
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And the Xbox games often aren't even good enough to justify spending the time to play them on Game Pass.
 
reinking said:
Who keeps saying they are changing it? They have always been clear about their policy on games going to PS+ and PC.
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Nobody is actually saying it outside of the people who insist that PlayStation is going third party and releasing all their titles on PC, and the people who think GP is the best thing ever so obviously PS+ will need to copy it to succeed.
 
ProtoByte said:
And the Xbox games often aren't even good enough to justify spending the time to play them on Game Pass.
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That's the thing...most games people play on a subscription service you always know they ain't all that when people say "perfect game for gamepass" that's synonymous of "i'd never buy this shit but it's okay to lose a few hours in it"
 
reinking said:
Who keeps saying they are changing it? They have always been clear about their policy on games going to PS+ and PC.
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Its mostly coming from weird Xbox fanboys who desperately want the Gamepass model to be validated. Sony doing the day one release would be an admission that Good Guy Phil was right all along with his retarded decisions.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
That's the thing...most games people play on a subscription service you always know they ain't all that when people say "perfect game for gamepass" that's synonymous of "i'd never buy this shit but it's okay to lose a few hours in it"
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That we now have terms like "good enough for Game Pass" and "Game Pass fodder" is fairly telling. Sub services are not for me, but they definitely have a place and many people enjoy them. I'm just glad they've remained as an accompaniment to gaming, not the mainstay.
 
ExtendEmbraceExtinguish said:
Now imagine what msft can do with the 1 billion pc gamers out there if they could only merge Xbox and windows.

Remember the most wanted steam games are not always aaa titles.
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Microsoft already tried that with Games for Windows Live. PC gamers did not take kindly to the idea, rightly so, and it was a miserable failure.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
That's the thing...most games people play on a subscription service you always know they ain't all that when people say "perfect game for gamepass" that's synonymous of "i'd never buy this shit but it's okay to lose a few hours in it"
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Back to the real world: Expedition 33 came out day one on GamePass and it's better than anything Sony has released all generation.
 
Yeah no shit. There's a living breathing case study happening in front of the whole world right now showing what a shit move that would be.
 
Shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. During the MS/ABK SEC hearings, Sony testified that they tried putting Horizon 2 on PS+ earlier than expected as an experiment and lost something like $80m of projected revenue.
 
Their strategy is the most successful one out of the three console makers, are the market leaders and their business keeps growing. Both in general and specifically about gamesubs.

So the common sense says that doesn't make sense to make big changes to copy unsuccessful strategies. The normal would be to continue using the same strategy with minor tweaks to keep improving the stuff.
 
As we've seen from the last 8 years of Game Pass, all "day one" releases have done is condition players into not buying games and has created a new form of "port begging" in the form of "Game Pass when?!".

Launching a game day one on a subscription service tells users of that service that the game isn't really worth $70 (or $80), it's worth the price of one month's subscription. This is something Ubisoft is also learning the hard way. I have played three of their major triple-A projects at launch (Avatar, SW Outlaws, and AC Shadows) for less than it would cost to buy ONE of them ($53.98 in 3x one month sub fees vs. $69.99 MSRP for a single game). Meanwhile they're over there wondering why they're not meeting sales expectations. 🤔


playbignbox said:
Back to the real world: Expedition 33 came out day one on GamePass and it's better than anything Sony has released all generation.
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Expedition 33 flew under the radar for most people and even those who had been following it didn't think it was going to be as big as it became. Cherry picking one example hardly proves your case. Hi-Fi Rush was also a Game Pass standout that came out of nowhere and how'd that work out for Tango?
 
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Smart.
Who would be dumb enough do that and eat into sales and essentially making your product obsolete? Who says First party games are a thing of the past? lol
Who would be this naive? I mean, a failing platform would make these claims
 
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In other words, they are not gonna devalue their brand and games, cannibalize their software sales, and then force themselves to publish their games on competing consoles just to keep the lights on and still fire 1000s of employees.

Sounds like a good policy to me.
 
Nydius said:
As we've seen from the last 8 years of Game Pass, all "day one" releases have done is condition players into not buying games and has created a new form of "port begging" in the form of "Game Pass when?!".

Launching a game day one on a subscription service tells users of that service that the game isn't really worth $70 (or $80), it's worth the price of one month's subscription. This is something Ubisoft is also learning the hard way. I have played three of their major triple-A projects at launch (Avatar, SW Outlaws, and AC Shadows) for less than it would cost to buy ONE of them ($53.98 in 3x one month sub fees vs. $69.99 MSRP for a single game). Meanwhile they're over there wondering why they're not meeting sales expectations. 🤔




Expedition 33 flew under the radar for most people and even those who had been following it didn't think it was going to be as big as it became. Cherry picking one example hardly proves your case. Hi-Fi Rush was also a Game Pass standout that came out of nowhere and how'd that work out for Tango?
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Not only is this a quality game coming to GamePass, but I picked one up just because it dismantles this whole idea that only games that nobody wants are put on the service.

You see, this is so true that games ported to PlayStation like Forza or even Sea of Thieves were on the PlayStation Store charts.

I'm not arguing the viability of the strategy, but to disregard the quality of the games that come out on the service is simply unrealistic.
 
Putting games on subs even devalues the games on other storefronts. Can't say how much. My steam shopping habits changed because so many of the games I bought end up on the ps sub before I even get to play them. I really don't do as much bundle/deep sale shopping as I used to. It may actually save me money buying games I will never play, which is retarded but happened naturally. GP just had a good streak with indy, claire, doom, and oblivion. But now in my mind those are going to get real cheap...

I'm sure it's hard to model all of the downstream effects on buyer behavior. Counting up how many sales are lost is probably one of the more straightforward metrics.
 
playbignbox said:
I'm not arguing the viability of the strategy, but to disregard the quality of the games that come out on the service is simply unrealistic.
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I understand your argument and agree in part. But thumbing through the "All Games" tab on the Game Pass menu, I can't help but get the feeling that I'm looking at the old "PC games on CD" end cap shelf at the local office supply stores back in the mid 2000s. Sure, you might find a few gems buried on the shelf but you have to rifle through a LOT of low quality shovelware to get to them.
 
yurinka said:
Their strategy is the most successful one out of the three console makers, are the market leaders and their business keeps growing. Both in general and specifically about gamesubs.

So the common sense says that doesn't make sense to make big changes to copy unsuccessful strategies. The normal would be to continue using the same strategy with minor tweaks to keep improving the stuff.
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They are not the market leaders of the three console makers.
 
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